Once Upon a Time Bosses Confirm One 'Emotional' Return, Offer Update on Other Encores for Final Season

As Once Upon a Time gets ready to launch the back half of what will now be its final season (starting this Friday at 8/7c), the ABC drama’s’ creators were asked at a Tuesday press screening to tease any big encores for the series finale.

“No one has been confirmed yet,” said Adam Horowitz, “but what we will say is we hope to see a lot of familiar faces,” with any such announcements being made “in the coming weeks.”

Added Eddy Kitsis: “There’s an open invitation for every actor who’s been on the show to come back in the finale. And so we’ll see who’s available.” (Addressing a “rumor” that even I hadn’t heard, that Jennifer Morrison is set for a final encore, Kitsis made clear, “[She] has not been confirmed to come back, on any level.”)

“If the question is ‘Will the final hours remind us of the last six years?’ then the answer is yes,” Kitsis added. “But does that mean everybody’s coming back? No. Because they’re real people with real lives, and we can’t force them. We try!”

The series creators were able to announce that the original Henry, Jared Gilmore, will be back for an Episode 20 flashback — one that required the young actor to make a date with some scissors. “He had long hair and we had to cut it!” Kitsis reported.

Of course, Gilmore already appeared at the onset of this Season 7 “requel,” as Henry sped off on his motorcycle into a portal to find and write his own story, emerging on the other side, one time jump later, as Andrew J. West. “We’re going to kind of show an episode with him before that,” said Kitsis, “in Storybrooke with Regina. Horowitz added: “It’s a really sweet, emotional mother-son story.” (With reporting by Scott Huver)

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